John E. Murdoch described him as "a distinguished medievalist" who was "the last member of a triumvirate [with Henry Guerlac and I. Bernard Cohen, who] … established the history of science as a recognized discipline within American universities.
[1] He then studied history at Columbia University with Lynn Thorndike, receiving his Ph.D. in 1941[3] with the thesis Giovanni Marliani and Late Medieval Physics.
[1] He had initially intended to study the fifteenth century scholar Gennadius Scholarius, but changed focus on his advisor's guidance.
[1] After obtaining his degree he entered the US Navy in 1941 as an ensign and after serving in the Pacific theater of World War II and in particular on Okinawa Island, he was discharged in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant commander.
[7] He organized an influential 1957 conference on Critical Problems in the History of Science, which participant I. Bernard Cohen called "a landmark occasion, a real turning point in the maturation of our discipline,"[8] and he edited the resulting seminal volume of papers, published 1959.
[5] He was also a member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik, and the International Academy of the History of Science, which he served as vice president from 1968 to 1971.